• Adventures with the ‘Rents

    Posted on by suguay

    Doing things with my parents often has promise of memorable moments. The latest moment was shopping. Not just normal everyday shopping, we went shopping for boots. Not for me I have two pair, the boots were for my parents.

    The idea was to get my Dad a pair of cowboy boots. He had some when my parents married and he wore them for a long time. I have no idea what happened to them only that he no longer had any. He used to wear them Square Dancing and for other stuff as well. So off we go to Sheplers to look at boots. Dad finds a pair that fit right for him and then we corner the sales guy for help with socks. Not my idea, Mom’s. So we get the low down on how the boots should fit, how to know that they are just right and I find out I should let rotate mine so they can air/dry out properly. humph. Mom sends Dad off with sales guy to find jeans that fit while she goes searching for him a shirt. No success on the shirt. Success on properly fitting jeans so they got two pair. 

    Now it’s time to see about a pair of boots for Mom.

    Well that was a challenge. She can’t wear the women’s boots because they aren’t wide enough unless she goes up to a size that is so too big they slip and slide on her heal like nobody’s business. She tried on points and not so points and even some square toed boots. I don’t think we got her to try the really rounded toe boots. It was funny. Watching her bend over and pull up the boots. Dad took mercy on her and found some boot hooks, I think that’s what they’re called. So she can hook them over the loops to help pull up the boots without having to bend over too far. She thought these things just great. Ok, I admit, sometimes it’s just way too far to the floor. After splitting a gut watching her get in and out of boots in the women’s section we hobble, one shoe off fashion back down to the men’s boots. She tries on a couple pair that still either don’t fit or aren’t comfortable. She even tried on the really cool looking ones. Uh, nope. So I find her this worn in leather, floppy style boot with a slightly rounded toe. 

    Mom’s reaction to these boots was that they weren’t very pretty and she figured the way she was going, they would turn out to be the ones that fit and felt good. Yep, they were. And just because she complained we had her try on the ones with red flames and even the biker ones. So she puts on these not so pretty boots and starts trying to walk. I busted the other gut. I laughed so hard I was almost crying. She wasn’t walking, she was trying to skate on the carpet. The boots have leather soles. For those that may not have worn shoes or boots with leather soles they are super slick until you get them good and scuffed up. Mom is skating on the carpet in these, ‘not so pretty’ boots and her pants are too short and she’s got her arms out to keep her balance. It was funny. So finally I try to get her to stroll on the non-carpet floor. This gets a little better. Now she got Dad to dance with her and then she relaxed a little. 

    Mom bought the not so pretty boots. She wore them the next day. She things they are a better investment than a gym membership because she got quite a workout wearing them for two hours. She did get some longer pants so they don’t look as strange, or so she says.

    Cheers

    Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.


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  • My Take on Different Online Games Pt. 4

    Posted on by suguay

    Or as I was going to call it: my take on different online games, part…I don’t remember so lets talk about Eve. Eve Online is today’s topic.

    I would say this is not the most difficult game out there, I’ve already established how complicated Anarchy Online is. It is however not the easiest game out there and I think this is a good thing. It’s also one of the few sci-fi based games that really has it’s own world and isn’t built on something else. It’s mostly based on the idea that whatever is left of humanity has moved out into space. We inhabit ships and fly from place to place using jumpgates and the occasional, newly introduced, wormhole. Oh, and as to be expected we are at war with someone or other and then there are the pirates and low security space.

    You have the option in this to not play the full on fighter. It’s a little tough at first if you don’t at least do a little fighting. Or learn how to use drones so they can do the fighting for you. I personally like to mine. I am adverse to high repair bills. I also get tired of spending the hard earned cash on bullets, missiles and the like. So I mine. I have even made my own bullets. And then made excess to sell.

    I’ve hinted at what have turned out to be some of the more interesting or frustrating parts on some games.

    The skill system, crafting, and the market system. I don’t think Eve has an NPC market for purchasing stuff that gets looted. I think it does for supply of things like skills not for goods. It is otherwise a player driven market and prices on various commodities have risen and fallen and exploded and tanked over time. The folks at CCP who make Eve Online even have an Economist advisor to consult on the in game markets. This is part of what interested me to begin with. A feature that I really like is that you can download a file that contains your market transactions so you can load them in a spreadsheet or a database and figure out how you are doing in the game financially and what items are more profitable for you. You can also do this for your Corp. We’ll come back to the Corp.

    The skill system I really like. You purchase your skill book, you right click it and train and you start learning it. Now when you log off, you continue to learn. So you log back on and you ‘skill training complete’ message comes through and you do the same thing with that skill or another. Yep, you learn your skills whether you are in game or not. Kind of cool since I’ve seen skills that take 24 days to train. In fact, when CCP gets ready to to a major expansion/upgrade they tell you to be sure to setup a nice long skill training.

    Now the way the crafting works turns out to have similarities to the skill training. If you have the skill and the goods to make something and the blueprint then you can go to a staion that has manufacturing facilities. You rent a manufacturing bay, load in what you want to make and how many and then you get a cost quote and the amount of time it will take to make it. Go off now and do more mining or fighting or whatever. Come back and pick it up when it’s done.

    In Eve Onine the player organizations are called Corps, as in corporations. The idea being that the universe is run by corporations and powerful financial people. Of course, they can afford the good ships and to own a space station and well you get the idea. Let’s face it, with the way things have been going in the real world it wouldn’t surprise most of us to find out it’s the corporations that run the world not the governments. Many of us are sure it isn’t just that way. I digress. It turns out that to create a player Corp is not that hard. It’s a little costly. Not hard. And you can have a Corp of One. I did it. I did it because I wanted to see what it would take and what all additional stuff there was the access to and the whizbangs.

    Corps can get large enough to own or rent space stations and have their own manufacturing facilities and all that. Given the profits the NPC stations must be making for rental and taxes, it seems like a pretty good thing to have. Of course, you have to have the player base and the equipment to defend it. And some Corps have people who just manufacture stuff for the corp and then the corp sells it. Usually large things like ships that take a lot of resources. With all this you can see where it would be nice to download all the Corp’s market transactions to keep track of them and to analyze them so you know if you are getting the highest profit margins. Or not paying too much for resources from other players.

    As for aesthetics of the game…it’s a bit dark. It’s space, it’s going to be dark. It’s sci-fi. The only thing that is not easy to find in the interface is the quit/exit button. If you can get to the options you can figure out how to get out of the game.

    Eve used to be a download only, at least in the US. They’ve come out with a retail version recently. If they are like some of the other manufacturers you get something extra if you buy the box. Though I don’t know that for sure. It is a monthly subscription game with the option to pay in multi-month chunks that gives you a little price break. You can also trade in game currency called ISK for game time codes, perfectly legally and within the terms of service.

    For game play, there is a questing/mission system. As you get better standing you get better missions. Don’t decline too many of those missions that you ask for though, your standing will go down and you’ll start getting crappy missions. Either really hard or not a lot of pay out. There is in game chat windows with an area panel as well as corp panel that are automatic. I think there is voice as well though I admit, I don’t use it.

    I like this one. I don’t play a lot because I really use the market data for some stuff like learning how to use and build databases and the like. I’m a geek what can I say. Still, I continue to pay my subscription and log on and check my skills periodically and once in a while I’ll log in and chat with my corp while I mine.

    That’s my little bit on Eve. Go play it.

    See you in the Machine.

    Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.


    📂This entry was posted in Games Land

  • What is it About Cowboy Boots?

    Posted on by suguay

    There is something about Cowboy Boots. I’ve asked this a couple of times in the last two or three days. It is amazing how putting on my cowboy boots can nearly instantly make me feel better. No lie.

    I have trouble with my feet and I sometimes have trouble with my back. I did some things last weekend that kind of upset both the feet and the back. My back hurt from my left ear to half way down my left buttocks. I was plenty uncomfortable and miserable into Tuesday. I have often said that my cowboy boots were/are the most comfortable pair of shoes I own. So my mother says to me,

    ‘why don’t you wear them then?’ Ok, I give. I put them on and within moments I was feeling better. I know this is what will happen. I can’t believe I don’t remember this. Even the foot doc said that if they feel good I should wear them. 

    There is something about cowboy boots that when you step into a pair that is right for you, you know it instantly. They feel so good that yoyu almost swoon. It’s when the heel is just the right height and the box of it is just the right width and they feel and look ‘RIGHT’. I don’t think I’ve ever wore another type of shoe that I had that feeling about. No pair of walking shoes or tennis shoes, or even my beloved Crocs, has given me quite the feeling of pleasure on my feet. 

    I’ve worn my boots for two days now and my back pain is nearly gone completely. My feet, though tired this morning and a bit sensitive where feeling much better by the end of the day. I’ve had these boots for about five or six years. I’ve had to have them resoled once as I wore them so much I wore a hole in the bottom. I’m needing to have the heels done again. I really wear my boots. I remember not too long after I got them, I’d been wearing them all day and doing a lot of walking on concrete and then I went to the gym and as I walked to my car in my tennis shoes I realized how hard it had become to walk in my bouncy tennis shoes. I love my boots. And anyone else that I have spoken to who have a pair of cowboy boots feel the same way.

    There is something about the way cowboy boots are made, fit, something that they are just the most comfortable things to wear on the feet. 

    I spent a lot of time in my youth in the Midwest. I remember my father and grandfather having cowboy boots. In fact, they had two pair. Or at least my father did. They worked in plumbing and air conditioning. He had a pair of boots he wore to work and a pair of boots for dress-up. 

    Now, with needing to have the heels on my boots done I thought, I need to get another pair. I don’t want to be out of boots for however long it might take for the cobbler to do the heels.  Thus, this evening I found myself making my way to Shepler’s. I walk in, in my boots that need new heels, their black by the way, and I start trying to find the right boot for me. I start with what is usually me shoe size. And then went up. I found a pair that, when I put them on, I felt that pleasure that comes with knowing you had found your glass slipper, i just nearly to swooned. I looked at a few other pairs. Some looked really cool and none gave me anything close to the same feeling. And so I bought a new pair of boots. I now have a pair of black Laredos and a pair of brown Justins. (That’s for those of you who know something about shoes and or boots.) I can now get the heels done on my one pair and I have that required pair of black shoes and pair of brown shoes, only their boots.

    What is it about Cowboy Boots? I don’t know for sure, I only know that they are the greatest footwear there is. I love my cowboy boots.

     

    Cheers

     

    Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.


    📂This entry was posted in The Blog!

  • I Love the DJ

    Posted on by suguay

    Yeah, who hasn’t fallen in love with the DJ. The DJ who mixes the music you love so much and gets it just right.

    You thought I was talking about that one on the radio didn’t you. Ha. I am referring to the really cool iTunes DJ. Trust me no radio DJ could mix what I listen to. For one, no station would allow it. They are all so format restrictive. Not even some of the independents could get it like I like it. I such a varied collection of music that they would be fired for trying it. Once in a while I run across a station that careens wildly from one extreme genre to another. Not very often. So I love the DJ in iTunes. It chooses 15 songs to play and as it finishes one it adds another. I get to see the list of upcoming selections and time my activities around them so I can be closer for my more favorite songs, unlike shuffle where you get a random-ish selection but you never know what’s next. Don’t get me wrong, I make heavy use of this feature in other circumstances as well. 

    I was voicing my love of the iTunes DJ and some very nice Apple Salesperson expressed how if I loved that, had I tried the Genius feature.

    No. Sorry. I’m not really that interested in dealing with a schizophrenic computer program. I really don’t think it will cope very well if, as my sample songs I give it Andre Segovia and Def Leppard. It might freak a little over the Carpenters and U2. Abba and the Dropkick Murphys, the Eglish Guitar Quartet and Los Straightjackets. Yeah, I do that to my computer and I’ll be needing to get it pyschoanalysis. Seriously. I just went from Andre Segovia playing Eight Lessons for the Guitar – No. 8 in E minor to Gary Hoey playing Stomp and Shake from the Endless SummerII soundtrack. Ah, and now my all time favorite. King Harvest playing Dancin’ in the Moonlight. In in a few minutes I’ll be listening to Ladysmith Black Mambazo followed by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band.

    I like using this feature better than trying to create play lists and spending hours trying to decide what song is going to sound best after that song and then what should come next. I’ve done that. Anyone remember mix tapes? Cassettes that you put together your favorite songs from either other tapes or vinyl? Yeah. You had to time it just right so that you didn’t have too much time between songs. You didn’t what to waste too many of those precious seconds of that 30 minute or 45 minute side. 

    I do use the shuffle feature on my iPod. It, by itself doesn’t have a DJ. In this case the shuffle is a reasonably acceptable substitute. It’s just not the same as the DJ. sigh. Still, in my car it would be better than what I do now. Put a cd in and listen to it for a week straight and then find another and rotate the same 5 or so cd’s. I have got to get a stereo in my car that will let me hook up my iPod. There isn’t much on the radio these days except NPR. Hey, that’s where I first heard Gogol Bordello. 

    No, no Genius and no DJ on the radio is ever going be as good as my personal DJ in iTunes. It’s just way better. Now I’m off to chill to some Louis Jordan and the Beach Boys, the Tossers, Elton John and Cher, and whoever else pops up.

    Chees

    Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.


    📂This entry was posted in The Blog!

  • My Take on Different Online Games Pt. 3

    Posted on by suguay

    I seriously considered not doing Part 3 to this series. Then I looked at the list of games I haven’t covered yet and decided I had better do part 3. There will probably be a part 4 as well. There are a couple of games that I have quite a bit to say on them. And without further delay the games I expect to cover in this article are (where’s my drum roll….): eRepublik, Runescape, and TribalNations. There is a common theme here, they are all browser based games. Just as a way of clarification, a browser based game is one that you play from within a web browser and most of the time you do not need to download or install a seperate software.

    TribalNations. I am an active player of this game.

    I got an email to give it a try from Akklaim people because I have a 9Dragons account there. So I signed in and tried it out. It took some getting used to. The game was very new and I was a new citizen of a very small village. So the idea is that you are a native in MesoAmerica before the Europeans landed. You have to eat to stay alive. You have to work to get money. To advance you have to increase certain stats such as strength, intelligence and charisma. This is done through eating certain foods. If you fall below a certain health level you loose stats. So once you start getting those stats, better make sure you have a steady source of food. You can sell stuff on the market. Most of the time this is the way to sell stuff though once in a while you can sell stuff to the clan hall. You elect your clan chief. Once you have enough reputation and money you want to level to level one where you will want to choose your farm. You can grow different crops or raise animals.  At level one you will need to start raising those stats and more money. You will need much more money to reach level two. For one the food that gets you the stats, some of that is expensive and then you have to be dressed a certain way when you go to level up to level two and they are costly and that doesn’t include that you have to have much more money to level to level two.

    TribalNations really is an easy game to play, at least the way I play it. What I like about it more than it being all in the browser is that it takes me about 10 minutes or less a day to play and I have advanced to level two so far. The game isn’t very fancy and you really don’t get to see yourself walking around and all. Still it’s kind of cool and doesn’t require the committment of time that some of the bigger standalone games require. I’m sure it could if I wanted to get involved in the government or running a tavern. Since I don’t, no big deal.

    Runescape was the first browser based MMO that I came across. I thought the idea pretty cool as that meant I could play from any computer. It being based in Java was a thing I thought really cool too. I’m a bit on the geek side so strange things like that appeal. The game has a nice intro tutorial to show you how to do some basic things and get you started. I found the map a little troubling. And I have to admit I only did one or two quests. I got all stuck on one and then very frustrated with it. It’s not very sophisticated looking. I’m not a fan on the top down view that you get with this game. Still there’s only so much you can do in a browser based situation. There is leveling of a sort. You level the individual skills. Some contribute to your overall stats. You can learn to do a whole variety of things such as mining, cooking, crafting, farming, fighting, and I forget what else. You can learn magic.

    With Runescape, though you can play for free, you do miss out on some skills and the ability to mine certain ores. You can pay to play and I think that is less than $10 a month. I have a co-worker who lets her son play. The game masters or designers are pretty good about keeping the foul language down. I couldn’t even type something close to foul. It got censored. While the general idea is pretty cool with it being a browser based game, I have to admit, I got frustrated with getting lost so often and not being able to get back to some places. Though the frustrations I had with the game were relatively small and with just a little more perseverence they would not have been an issue, I did not find the look of the game and the occasional crowding, and overall enjoyment compelling enough to continue to be an active player. I can’t remember the last time I logged on.

    And finally eRepublik. I’ve been seeing this one advertised in the sidebar when I’m on TribalNations. That’s part of what prompted me to put in my two cents worth on it. To be fair to the developers of the game, when I was playing it was still in beta. I was so excited to get a chance to participate in a game before it went live. I had to sign up and then wait until they sent me an notice that they needed more eCitizens. I really thought this was going to be cool. It was billed as a sort of game and social networking thing in one. You had to work to earn money to buy food to eat. You could purchase money. You could, if you could get enough money, start a buisness and hire workers and produce goods. I never got this far. I was only a worker. You could have your own newspaper at no cost. It was much like a blog. The trick is that the topics were only supposed to be fiction or in game related. No commentary on Real World movies or goings ons. That was a challenge. I had a newspaper. You have probably noted how often I get articles up here so you can guess how well that went. I did get readers and a few comments. I was going along fairly happily in this game until the much anticipated v.1 came out. The look changed completely as well as a few fundementals to the game play and the place I was working didn’t have enough raw goods to make the final goods so most days I couldn’t work which stunk because you got a bonus for good work attendance. With that and not liking the new look of it, I gave up on it. I was mostly annoyed with the game and not willing to get past it. At the time it was not compelling enough to slog through. I have not been on it in many monthes. So once again, to be fair the the developers and the people who play this, it may be much better. I’m not likely to venture over and find out.

    So that’s my fairly short take on these three games. I know this assessment isn’t quite the same as the previous ones. What can I say they aren’t the biggies. A few games that I have an even shorter take on: Planetside, this was and I think still is in development and when I was playing the server went down a lot. It seems like a fairly cool idea though. I didn’t get very far before not bothering anymore. Dark & Light was also still in beta/development at the time. There were server issues and some of the profession quests were broken so you really couldn’t advance in that area. I think I tried it for a weekend before deleting from the computer. Silkroad Online: this one I met someone else who played it and really liked it. I had trouble with it and I was very new to online games so I didn’t really give it a chance. I have considered trying it again. I haven’t yet.

    That brings us to the next in this series. There are two games left that I’ll share my opinion on. If you’ve read some of the other articles you can probably guess at one of them. To find out for sure though, you will have to check back for part 4 in this series.

    See you in the machine.

    Games

    Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.


    📂This entry was posted in Games Land